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Slow Havamal: 50
May. 11th, 2022 12:06 pm
In the 50th verse, the decay of a fir tree stripped of bark and needles is compared to that of a person who nobody loves, and the outlook is bleak.
On the heels of a verse that reminded me very much of the scarecrow folks I see wandering the streets, we get another stark image: a fir tree stands over a farm, its bark stripped, its needles falling. A man who no one loves faces the same fate. Love, in this sense, is both the thing that protects him from the elements, and the means of sustaining himself with the sun’s rays. Being loved is essential to a healthy life. Never mind the clothes from verse 49—that was a simpler fix. Love serves as both shield to guard against the weather, and cup to be filled from without.
It’s something I don’t take into consideration often. Faced with a person—any person—we might wonder who loves them? In what way? Those of us lucky enough to have received love their whole lives take this for granted, but not everyone can count on their parents, siblings, friends, and spouses to give it, if for no other reason than they may not have such relations. And right away, it’s clear there’s another problem. Here we have another great opportunity for me to harp on one of my enduring pet peeves of the English language: we have one word to describe the entire spectrum of emotional attachment shared between any two human beings for any reason or duration. How is the love of a summer fling the same as the love of a mother for her child? Or the love of a lifelong friend the same as the love of a blood brother? The one we have for our dog, compared to the one we have for ourselves? I’m not sure what, if any, languages handle it better. But we have an identity problem, in which a vast array of different experiences are crammed together and coded under a single category.
Phew! That aside, there does seem to be enough similarity between these feelings that a metacategory is appropriate (if we could only deal with the subcategories). It’s technically possible to survive without it, just as a tree can stand in a sorry shape, but the person begins a process of withering. I don’t care to guess at something as grand as “what love is,” but as one who’s given it and received it in a number of different forms, it feels not unlike an exchange of energy in the literal sense, the way the sun’s rays allow a tree to produce essential nutrients. Even the unrequited giving can fill a person with a sort of life. A mutual exchange has a far more profound effect. The rest of the world seems to fall away, with its emotionless concerns, as if a bark protects us from the minor assaults of our contemporaries.
Yet there are people who don’t receive it at all. Some of them, born into terrible circumstances, may have never felt it. A heartbreaking realization, for sure. No remedy is suggested in this verse. We’re left with the question of how much longer this man can live. It may not be so easy to share love as it is a shirt. Some people who go without love do so because they just don’t say or do the things that could make others love them. That may be a tragic fault of their circumstances, but even so, it won’t endear them to anyone. At least a few probably don’t experience it because they haven’t learned to give it.
As much as I think this problem may be insoluble, I can’t help but wonder how we would approach it if we had 256 different words and modifiers—a color spectrum of loves. The word is so loaded that at times it feels too daunting to even utter (and others, it’s thrown around trivially for food preferences and other conveniences). Is there at least something about most people that could fill us with a painful-yet-pleasurable appreciation, a longing to relate? Pity is a cruel gift, but isn’t there something like love in “compassion,” “sympathy,” “desiring better for”? Something that doesn’t require us to abandon our whole selves the way a new lover would, or to devote our every hope and resource as to a child?
I wonder if love has to be a binary switch that’s all the way on like a fire hose or off like a desert wash. I’ve never been without it, though I do question exactly what kind and under what conditions I’ve experienced it, and whether there may be more rewarding varieties if I could just find the right thing to say, or do, or think. But if I were loveless, I would think even the barest trickle of temporary appreciation would feel like salvation under a scorching sun. There’s no easy answer here, and as many possibilities as there are people with imaginations. If there’s something I can take away from this verse—a hint of something wonderful waiting to be tapped—it’s to ask myself: how many ways could I do a thing like “love” if I let go my rigid notions of the word’s narrow meaning? I’m sure those around me would appreciate even a tentative answer.
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Date: 2022-05-11 08:15 pm (UTC)Many of us do take love for granted, I suspect. Coming from a place where "love" spelled backwards is the name of the town, where our mythological forerunners were descended from Venus Herself, it's amazing that we may get so overwhelmed by other things that we overlook Her. She conquers all, as the saying goes. A quote from a book on myths posed the question: Why do most of the gods bear a weapon, but Aphrodite goes about bare...? The answer: She needs no weapon, because She is the weapon. I know She ranks relatively low on the ol' hierarchy of needs, but I often think that those who have Her will endure any hardship or deficiency, even unto death. And that lack of love, when we are trying to figure out others' motivations, often presents the key.
That verse you mention is heavy, and cuts right to the quick. Good stuff.
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Date: 2022-05-11 08:49 pm (UTC)